wfn.org | Church lays new cornerstone for repentance, reconciliation

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

April 17, 2002	News media contact: Linda Green7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.     10-31-71BP{168}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this report.

By Linda Green*

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (UMNS) - A year of listening and developing relationships
between four Methodist bodies in the Kansas City area compelled a United
Methodist church to lay a new cornerstone proclaiming "repentance,
reconciliation and joy."

In preparation for hosting a community worship service for the Commission on
Pan-Methodist Cooperation and Union, Trinity United Methodist Church in
Kansas City, Kan., began meeting last year with nearby Trinity African
Methodist Episcopal Church, St. Peters Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
and Stephens United Methodist Church. It also met with Metropolitan African
Methodist Episcopal Zion Church of Kansas City, Mo., and Southern Heights
United Methodist Church of Leavenworth, Kan.

"We are in an area of transition and we were invited to host the community
event by Kansas Area Bishop (Albert 'Fritz') Mutti," said the Rev. Mark R.
Holland, pastor at Trinity United Methodist Church. The church being called
upon to host a pan-Methodist celebration of unity is ironic, he said,
because "Trinity has been a part of the separation and segregation in Kansas
City, Kan." 

Trinity church was founded in 1961, after three others were closed so that
the congregations could move to the countryside. Holland, a third-generation
United Methodist clergyman, said the churches were in areas in transition or
becoming African American. The current membership includes people from eight
different congregations.

The Commission on Pan-Methodist Cooperation and Union represents the more
than 12 million members of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME), African
Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ), Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) and
United Methodist churches and meets twice a year. One of the four communions
hosts each meeting, and it also develops a community-wide pan-Methodist
gathering.

The Kansas City pan-Methodist celebration focused on the traditions of each
communion as well as the common Wesleyan heritage each shares. The event was
geared toward enabling the churches to find healing from the sin of racism,
to gain greater understanding of one another and to commit to working
together for God's kingdom.

While preparing for the commission meeting and the April 11 community event,
the Trinity congregation used Steps Toward Wholeness: Learning and
Repentance, a 36-page study guide intended to help United Methodist
congregations prepare for  "acts of repentance for racism" and to aid in
pan-Methodist conversations on union. The guide was prepared by the United
Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns. The
congregation also engaged in a study group with Trinity AME, using the guide
as a resource.  

"This led to the beginning of building relationships and partnerships,"
Holland said.

Preparing the congregation to repent for its role in racism, Holland
delivered a six-part sermon series about a new cornerstone. He talked about
divisions - of race in the Bible and in the United States, of the church
during the Civil War and afterward. He addressed the church's segregation,
including its creation in the 1930s of a Central Jurisdiction for African
Americans, and of the role that Kansas City, Kan., and Trinity Church played
in white flight - the movement of whites into suburbs to escape people from
other racial and ethnic backgrounds.

"Kansas City, Kan., has been the poster child for white flight," he said.
"We need to seek racial healing." At the close of the Palm Sunday sermon on
April 7, the congregation was invited forward for healing and anointing. 

"This was a very powerful (moment) because we were finally able to name the
elephant in the room that everyone has been tripping around for 40 years,"
Holland said.  

Basing his Easter sermon on Matthew 21: 42-43, Holland talked about a new
cornerstone in Jesus Christ. At that service, each member of the
congregation wrote down a personal sin of racism, brought it to the altar
and placed it in a burning bowl.  After the congregation sang the Easter
anthem "Crown Him with Many Thorns," the ashes were scraped into an urn. A
hole was cut beneath the church's original cornerstone, and "the ashes of
repentance" were set inside. A new cornerstone was laid with the
inscription: "A new cornerstone built with repentance, reconciliation and
joy. A community united in Jesus Christ: the chief cornerstone."

Nebraska Bishop Rhymes Moncure, who once served as a pastor in Kansas City,
Kan., laid the cornerstone. He "blessed the cornerstone to reclaim this
church for God's work and for the pan-Methodist celebration," Holland said.

The commission, he said, is about building relationships, and participating
in the service provided Trinity opportunities to build at the local level.  

During the community worship service, AME Bishop Larry Kirkland of Marina
Del Rey, Calif., noted the roads the Methodist churches in the Kansas City
area had taken to arrive at the gathering. 

"Tonight, we come to the place where God is looking at us - AME, AMEZ, CME
and UMC. It is time that we repent of sins and realize that we are involved
in the ministry of reconciliation," he said. "Jesus is saying to UMC, AME,
AMEZ and CME: 'Repent or perish.' I thank God that the United Methodist
Church owned up to the fact that (it has) been racist. ... I'm happy that
black Christian churches admitted to the fact that maybe we don't need to
repent for racism but we need to repent for a whole lot of things like
suspicion and from continuing to nurse our hurts and pains.

"All of us need to have a change of heart so that we can change our
conduct," he said.

The meaning of "repentance" is often misunderstood, Kirkland said. It means,
he said, "leaving the sins we've loved before and (showing) that we in
earnest grieve by doing them no more." It does not involve a ritual form of
penance or simple remorse, he said. Repentance is a change of the mind that
leads to a change in action. "We cannot weep our way to repentance. We
cannot cry our way to repentance. It is a real turnaround of one's life in
respect to sinful conduct."

Part of the commission's charge is to explore the meaning of union for the
four Methodist churches. "Before we can even think about merger, there must
be serious repentance, a change of the mind, that leads to a change in our
actions," Kirkland said. "We cannot continue to do business as usual."

As his repentance theme continued, Kirkland said the four denominations need
to repent for failing to serve their reason for being. "The tree was planted
in the garden to bear fruit," he said.   He asked the congregation how each
communion could move beyond "pious rhetoric to constructive acts of
reconciliation and partnership." 

Kirkland told the pan-Methodist congregation that God is calling each of
them to be agents of reconciliation. "If God has saved you, God wants you to
be the catalyst for others to be saved. If God has blessed you, God wants to
share your resources with someone else."

Centering his message on Luke 13:1-9, in which the gardener was asked to cut
down an unfruitful fig tree, Kirkland told the congregation that "we need to
repent from uselessly occupying useful space." As the tree was planted in
good space and not producing, there are those who are just occupying space
at all levels of the church, he said.

For Cretta Collins, a CME from Jamaica, N.Y, "the community gathering and
the acts that led up to its being held made the commission come alive for
me. I saw ... what it will be like when we all get together."

Though the commission celebrated during Trinity's program, members also
reflected on a community service held last November at St. George's United
Methodist Church in Philadelphia. 
The church was the scene in 1787 of a racial incident that prompted Richard
Allen and other African Americans to walk out and begin a branch of
Methodism that practiced racial equality. Allen went on to form Mother
Bethel AME church in Philadelphia. 

Commissioners at the November meeting were offended by spoken words and by
resource materials available for purchase at St. George's that relate the
Methodist story. During the service, a member of the congregation dressed in
revolutionary garb disputed the actions of Allen and a booklet, The Story of
Historic St. George's, played them down. It stated: "Many false and
fantastic explanations have been passed down about Allen and his group as to
why and how they left St. George's, and many uncomplementary (sic) things
have been said of St. George's when she deserved only praise and gratitude
for giving Allen and his society opportunity and help." 

At the Kansas City meeting, the commissioners reiterated their sense of hurt
and indignation at the experience at St. George's. "I felt that this is a
diminishment of what has happened," said the Rev. Luther Smith, CME, of
Atlanta.
 
Although the stories of the AME, AMEZ and CME churches have been repeatedly
told and the UMC has confessed to the sin of racism within the denomination,
"the activities and material at St. George's is knocking the scab off an old
wound," said AMEZ Bishop Clarence Carr of St. Louis. "There is something
offensive in the way people visit events and history to suit themselves. It
has gone on too long. This in another instance of untruth."

At its 2000 General Conference, the United Methodist Church held an act of
repentance and called for reconciliation. Past racism in the church led to
the creation of the three other Methodist traditions in the 18th and 19th
centuries. Acts of repentance and reconciliation are being performed in
local and regional settings across the United Methodist Church.  

"The act of repentance was based on the St. George's event," said the Rev.
Taylor Thompson, AME, of Cincinnati. "If the pastor at St. George's ignores
this, he ignores the act." 

"St. George's is critical. It has a special place in the life of Methodism
in this country," said Jim McDonald, UMC, Charlottesville, Va. "We need to
offer a script to the church because they will be repeating the incorrect
story" through the portrayals and the booklet, he said.

In other action, the Commission on Pan-Methodist Cooperation and Union:
7	Held a panel discussion with students at United Methodist-related
Saint Paul School of Theology. The commissioners provided a pan-Methodist
point of view from a seminary, episcopal, pastoral and lay perspective.
7	Learned of a Summit on Christian Education, to be held Feb. 4-3 at
Ben Hill United Methodist Church in Atlanta and hosted by the United
Methodist Church Foundation;
7	Endorsed the Commission on United Methodist Men facilitating and
moderating a Pan-Methodist National Black Men's Conference, with the
understanding that proposed dates in March or April 2004 and financial
appropriations need to be reconsidered.
7	Learned that Candler School of Theology in Atlanta will launch a
children's movement. 
7	Learned of two consultations on the acts of repentance being planned
by the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious
Concerns - one for African Americans who remained in the United Methodist
Church and one for pan-Methodists.
7	Heard that commission Secretary Mary Love of Charlotte, N.C., will
conduct a Bible study on the acts of repentance for the annual session of
the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference.
# # #
*Green is news director for United Methodist News Service in Nashville,
Tenn.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
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